Wednesday, September 25, 20XX

Two days left before the challenge. We’re entering crunch time.

Mark and I are at the clubroom again. He brought some portable mats in so we don’t break the floor or our backs. It’s good stuff. It pads the impact. Makes getting thrown less painful.

I was a little concerned over the noise level. With us slamming against the ground, you’d think we’d attract a lot of noise. It turns out the walls are pretty acoustically-sound. I stepped outside and told Mark to jump like a kid on a trampoline and couldn’t hear much. Well, I went back in to find out he didn’t do anything, instead scowling at me for my choice of words. I revised, commenced ‘take two’, and ultimately figured things were in the clear.

It helps that we have a first floor room too. No faculty room below us to worry about. Unfortunately, that also means if we were to, say, start a fire and lock ourselves in, cell phone batteries dead, we couldn’t perform Repetition Side Steps to cause enough noise so as to alert a teacher for help. Haven’t you heard? It can surely happen. It’s within the realm of possibility.

What’s also within the realm of possibility is that I win the match. The odds are stacked against me. If I were to walk out victorious, that would be a miracle from the BJJ gods themselves. Although I can bet some sort of major handicap on Leandro’s end, I’m better off buying a lottery ticket, or getting hit by truck-kun and reincarnating into another world. Although, from what I know, the latter option seems more likely.

That’s poor escapism, though, and I am not one to escape from a challenge! Unless it’s too hard! And I’m not feeling motivated enough! And I feel too bothered to be bothered with anything!

With those convictions, I tried something different today. I watched lots of tape of matches between professional brazilian jiu-jitsu martial artists, as well as some amateur ones. They were cool and fiery, I have to say. The best help I can get, though, is from Mark himself. He is a breathing example, my mentor. There’s direct feedback in our student-teacher relationship. That is, if I do something wrong, there’s a good chance I’m breaking something (very extreme feedback).

Besides videos of real players, I also investigated an equally valid source of martial inspiration—light novels (for research purposes). After some math practice and good, classic literature for my reading class, I hit everyone’s favorite isekai worlds with everyone's favorite bland overpowered protagonist heroes defeating demon lords with cheat weapons. For research purposes, I revisited their epic adventures to herodom (such as going to the hot springs, going to the hot springs, and of course, going to the hot springs). I could have hit up the korean side, but most of the stories on their end that I know of tend to go apocalyptic, and I wasn’t feeling that.

While I don’t have a cheat weapon, I can definitely utilize another favorite technique that has shredded both demon lords and arrogant young masters alike.

Yes! This technique is cross-cultural and spans across centuries of great fighters.

The secret move!

For research purposes, I delved into these worlds to find inspiration for my own. Marcelo Garcia has his Marcelotine (or I think that’s his secret move but apparently it’s not so secret if I know about it) and I’ve seen Mark do some pretty crazy stuff too that I didn’t see the people on those BJJ videos do, and if I want to have a fighting chance, I need my own unorthodox move. After all, putting everything into the Marcelotine is great and all, but if it’s my only option, then it’ll be really easy to expect.

That’s no excuse for me not to continue practicing and pouring my time, heart, effort, sweat, blood, life savings into it. It is my best chance against him.

But, I thought it would be fun, so I gave it a shot.

I came up with a few ideas. Most didn’t work, of course. You can’t cultivate heaven-piercing power in a day, they say. One was promising, however.

It was a mad mix of basketball, breaking, and dungeon RPG moves. First a hesitation, then a step back, then a dodge roll, then a semi-windmill into a sweep to their legs, and finally, a finishing lock, ideally into the Marcelotine. I had a great image of it in my head, but when I tried to execute it against Mark…

“You fool. Stop playing around,” he said, shortly after CRUSHING ME AND MY SOUL.

I don’t know what’s worse—the physical or emotional damage. I’m glad he’s feeling better than yesterday, though.

He’s slowed down a bit, just a bit. It’s subtle.

He’s probably training too hard. I’ve gotta watch out for him more.

After the storm of cup noodles he had yesterday, he’s toned down for today. We had a thrifty but delicious avocado snack afterward, courtesy of Mr. Kafka. He dropped by, dropped off, and off he went. He told us to take it easy. I chuckled when I heard that.

I wish I wish I wish, I wished.

So, after those attempts and then some, I abandoned the secret move idea. It was not a bad idea, me. You did your best.

Isn’t that all that matters? At the end of the day, everyone’s a winner, EVERYONE.

“YOU get a trophy, YOU get a trophy, YOU get a- wait, who are you?”

“I’m the janitor.”

“Oh, is that right. Well then YOU get a trophy too!”

“THANK YOU! NOBODY ACKNOWLEDGES ME! FOR ALL MY LIFE, I’VE BEEN CHEATED OF RECOGNITION NO MATTER HOW HARD I WORKED, AND I SETTLED FOR WORKING AS A JANITOR BECAUSE-”

That’s the ideal world. But we’re living in the real world, the twenty-first century life, and the world’s got me feeling so crazy. You just need to get down and play sometimes. Amidst the pressure of the upcoming deadline, I tried my hand at some shenanigans that ultimately failed but kept me entertained, for a short while.

Then it was back off to the races. We put in the work, once more.

“Mo ikai! Mo ippon!” - Hinata.

“Another one.” - DJ Khaled.